Posts Tagged ‘Washington D.C.’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she didn’t come to Washington to be “bipartisan”, one day after shuttling through an $819 economic stimulus bill without a single Republican vote.

“I didn’t come here to be partisan, I didn’t come here to be bipartisan,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference. “I came here, as did my colleagues, to be nonpartisan, to work for the American people, to do what is in their interest.”

Pelosi expressed no regrets over passing the stimulus measure without any GOP support. Republicans followed their leaders in objecting to the bill on the grounds that it was put together without GOP input, and that it would not do enough to stimulate the economy.

Repeating the term “nonpartisan” on more than one occasion in describing the bill, the Speaker said her goal was to put President Obama’s vision on paper for the good of the country regardless of the type of support it garnered.

“The president’s agenda is reflected in this legislation,” the Speaker said. “People vote for what they believe in. Clearly, Republicans did not believe in [that] agenda … I think they probably voted their conscience.”

And she quickly defended her handling of the bill, which was criticized by Republicans and some Democrats as too one-sided.

“We reached out to Republicans every step of the way, and they know it,” Pelosi said. “They know it.”

“They were part of the original bill,” she added. “Some of the tax provisions were their suggestions. They had what they asked for in terms of committee markups. They had a rule on the floor that gave them plenty of opportunity to make changes. They just didn’t have the ideas that had the support of the majority.

“When you can’t win on policy, you always turn to process, and then you turn to personalities,” Pelosi said.

In contrast to her claim that her intent was to take a nonpartisan approach to passing the stimulus bill, a top aide to the Speaker struck a sharply partisan tone earlier in the day when he accused the GOP of acting in a “partisan and irresponsible manner” in objecting to the bill.

“There’s a pattern here of Republican economic mismanagement and Democrats stepping up to do what’s needed for the good of the country while Republicans acted in a partisan and irresponsible manner,” Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s top spokesman, wrote in a memo distributed to reporters Thursday morning.

Well I guess helping to end the homeless problems in American is not as important as so many folks say it is. Rather than start with “Change” which could be a smaller event of Inaugural festivals, 8 figures will be spend on an event that lasts maybe 30mins. Well I can’t wait to see the rest of his change. (And I’m sure folks will say oh but why make the black president change and tone the excessive celebrations. To them I say, why not have “The Messiah”, LEAD by example? If anything is change, that would be.)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Before sunrise on Thursday, Frank Mearns will leave the place he calls home, a stone’s throw from the White House, and join thousands of others in Washington who are upping sticks and moving out for the presidential inauguration.

But Mearns isn’t about to make a quick buck by renting out his pied-a-terre. Nor is he heading out of town on an inauguration escape holiday.

He’s one of Washington’s army of homeless who are being cleared from the center of the US capital ahead of the historic inauguration of Barack Obama.

“There’s a sweep on Thursday at 5:00 am,” Mearns said.

“Everyone’s got to be out of here and stay out until next Thursday,” the 37-year-old said.

“Here” is a space on 14th Street and New York Avenue, in the heart of a zone in the center of Washington that will be closed to traffic and heavily policed during the inauguration.

“Here” is also home to Mearns and a dozen other homeless people each night.

Five of his fellow street dwellers work full-time but can’t afford to pay the high rents in the Washington area. Another is a man who was displaced from his home in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. And there are a handful of women in the group.

“There’s a lady who’s been on the streets for 10 years and been raped seven times. She sleeps next to the guy from Katrina and if he’s not here, she sleeps somewhere else. She sleeps here for safety. She doesn’t know where she’ll go next week,” Mearns told AFP.

According to Michael O’Neill of the National Coalition for the Homeless, up to 1,200 people live rough in the security zone, including on Pennsylvania Avenue, the grand boulevard which the inaugural parade will march down.

The effort to clear the streets of Washington of its homeless population was unlike anything that former homeless man David Pirtle has witnessed.

“I was on the streets when George W. Bush had his second inauguration in 2005 and it was nothing like this. There were no large-scale sweeps. I slept on Pennsylvania Avenue the night before and the night after the inauguration,” said the 34-year-old who now works for the National Coalition for the Homeless.

“But as hard as the administration is going to try to make this look sanitary, the homeless are not going to be invisible. You can’t make 6,000-12,000 people disappear,” he said, citing official figures for homelessness in Washington-proper and the greater metropolitan area, including suburbs in Virginia and Maryland.

A dozen shelters will be open round-the-clock in Washington from Sunday until Wednesday, the day after Obama takes office, to provide temporary housing for the homeless.

The shelters will be equipped with televisions, showing live coverage of Obama’s swearing-in.

But they have only around 2,800 beds. And “things happen” in shelters, according to Mearns, who will be staying with an activist friend for the week.

Between one and two million people are expected to pour into Washington, a city of 400,000, for the inauguration, some paying tens of thousands of dollars a night for a hotel room and to attend lavish inaugural balls.

Given the huge numbers expected, unprecedented security measures are being put in place to try to ensure that the January 20 inauguration runs smoothly and safely.

“I don’t fault the people who are putting this together for trying to make it a safe event because if there are a couple of million people crammed into the middle of Washington, it could be a target for something,” Pirtle said.

“But you can do it and work with the community,” he added.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty has estimated that the inauguration will cost the city some 47 million dollars (35 million euros), while Maryland and Virginia have estimated their outlay at 12 million and 16 million dollars respectively.

“We are showing our priorities as a nation: throwing a multi-million dollar party while trying to shovel our poor and our homeless under the carpet,” Pirtle said.

“It’s an inauspicious start to our new administration of hope that Obama wants to work for,” he added, blaming city and security officials rather than the president-elect, who he said was “stuck in the middle.

Presidential Inauguration Committee spokesman Kevin Griffiths said he would “check what our interaction has been with the local authorities about the homeless,” and stressed that the organizers have been at pains to make the historic investiture as inclusive as possible.